I made a point to stop associating songs with people and events in late 1998, hoping to keep myself from letting songs I like hurt me emotionally. Sure, I might hear a song and note the similarity between it and my own life, but I've deliberately tried not to create those mental relationships. There were too many songs that I liked that I couldn't listen to anymore without flashes of this or that and I refused to let myself be ruled by fickle emotions. An occasional song slipped through the cracks, but my attempts were mostly successful. Now that I've started to dredge up the music of my early teens though, I find my brain automatically sifting through the rubble and finding those old associations. So far it's been ok, but I suspect I'll dig something up that'll hurt sooner or later.
Sometimes I wonder what it'd be like to not be me.